Wisdom in Your Body
/Last week, I was meeting with a client who needed to make a decision. After she explained all of the options and her thoughts about each option, I asked, “what does your body say to do?” She looked at me puzzled, so I went on to say, “do you have a gut feeling or notice tension when you think about one option over the others?” She said she knew what a gut feeling was, but asked what I meant about noticing tension. After I took her through this quick practice, she pointed out to me that I haven’t written about this in a Tuesday email yet. So here it goes…
Do you notice where you hold tension in your body?
It can be a helpful thing to notice, but I didn’t learn to pay attention to it until recent years. I tend to live in my head most of the time, but as I’ve begun to tune into my body more, I’ve found it to often be a better decision maker than my head. The body holds a lot of wisdom and truth for us, we just have to learn to listen.
To become more familiar with how your body feels in tension versus in relaxation, here is a simple practice:
While laying in bed or sitting in a chair, take a few deep breaths and then begin to progress through each muscle group listed below.
Tense the muscles in each area for about 10 seconds. Notice what tension feels like in this area of your body.
Release the tension. Focus on how relaxed that area now feels. Notice what sensations relaxing those muscles brings.
Move to the next muscle group and repeat the tension then relaxation pattern.
your legs - tighten your thigh muscles or curl your toes
your glutes - squeeze and hold
your abs - hold in your core really tight
your hands - clinch each hand into a fist extra tight
scrunch your shoulders up to your ears and hold
arms - tighten biceps or curl up arms in tight squeeze
squeeze face muscles tightly together
Try this practice first thing in the morning to wake up your body. Or before you go to sleep at night to release the tension of the day.
The more your practice noticing what tension feels like and what relaxation feels like, the more helpful your body can be in helping you make decisions.
With some intentionality, you will become attuned to noticing tension when something is stressful or worrisome. And, your body will begin to know how to relax when you tell it to.
By practicing intentional tensing and releasing, you form a language of communication with your muscles.
This may feel weird to you at first, but give it a few rounds. You will begin to pay more attention to signs from your body throughout the day.
I love this quote from Dr. Hillary McBride in the Wisdom of Your Body, “Our bodies are telling the stories we have avoided or forgotten how to hear - and sometimes our inability to feel our feelings (the messages that precede the alarm bells) means that our bodies have to scream in order to get some attention.”
Let’s start listening this week,